Diving with Sharks

We like Bimini. Both Jim and I have a history there from long before we met each other. Bimini is the Bahamian island that is closest to Florida. We went on a short dive trip there two years ago with our dive club, and this year we did it again. This time we took advantage of Neal Watson's Bimini Scuba Center and their special Hammerhead shark dive.

It's a 2 hour fast ferry ride from Fort Lauderdale to Bimini, then we checked into the Big Game Club and relaxed for the rest of the day, ready to dive in the morning. I just love the palm trees in the tropics! And the beautiful turquoise water.

On the first day, we dove the famous Sapona concrete shipwreck and a shark dive with the ever-present Caribbean reef sharks.
The weather turned a bit ugly on the second day, but we were able to get out and do the Hammerhead dive anyway - the most dangerous part of the dive was getting back up on the ladder in the 6 foot seas! There were 2 hammerheads in the water with us and, although the water was a bit murky, they came close enough for us to get a good look. Here's Jim's video:
https://youtu.be/MmeuJ42wqV4

The weather continued to get worse until our ferry home was cancelled. Darn! We're stuck in the Bahamas for another day :-) We're very good at making lemonade when we're handed lemons and found out about the Bimini Shark Lab where they study all the sharks in the area, especially the Hammerheads we had just seen.
We were able to get in on a tour and listened to one of the staff tell us all about it. Two very interesting tidbits.

1. Their studies (using radio transmitters on the sharks) show that the shark-feeding tourism has not changed the Hammerheads migration pattern, or basic feeding habits. That is very good news.
2. Sharks are not, as we've always believed, attracted to human blood. Fish blood, yes, absolutely, but human blood - no. They experimented with dropping a quart or more of human blood near the sharks and they paid no attention at all. Just a drop of fish blood made them come running.

They also had an enclosure with some baby sharks that she told us all about.

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What Does This Button Do?

I have learned a few things about teaching technology

We taught a 3 hour, hands on, class today. 12 people with a mixture of iPhones and Android devices learned how to take a good picture with their phone and then how to make it better by editing with Google photos and Snapseed.

It went great!

I was surprised.

I have specific sample photos to demonstrate editing features of Google Photo and Snapseed. It works great for showing off the features in the best light, and I figured a hands-on class needed to give them the sample photos, but it's hard to do. First you have to figure a way to transfer the photos to the students. Then you have to work with the dates so the photos show up at the top of their photos. I just decided to ignore the samples for this class and people used their own photos and had a great time. One person even said, "I think my photo is an award winner now - Snapseed is great!"

• You can throw a lot at people, I've learned that building blocks are over-rated.
• Just need simple, bullet style notes
• Give them time to play/discover on their own, no need for detailed exercises

Here's the handout for this class. It took 3 hours with a 10-15 minute break.

Smartphone Photography

Snapseed

My first RV Rally

I'm not talking about my first rally of the year, I'm talking about my first rally ever, where I was an attendee. I didn't come to the rally to work. 

Our very first RV rally ever was the Great North American RV Rally in Hutchinson, Kansas in the summer of 2004. We were there as employees of Coach Connect and we operated the WiFi hotspot for other RVers. We could do that because we had a Datastorm Internet Satellite dish. Since then we've worked at all the major RV rallies by FMCA, Escapees, Good Sam, and many others, plus small rallies as well. Well over 100 rallies over our 16 years of RVing.

We're slowing down our schedule a bit these days, so when we found that it had been over 2 months since our camper had been on the road, we signed up for a Roadtrek get together in O'Leno state park. https://www.floridastateparks.org/parks-and-trails/oleno-state-park

our Roadtrek

others' Roadtreks

Being sociable

Going for a walk in the woods.

So that's what a rally is all about. Who knew?

The Decade of The Geeks

I've gone down the rabbit hole of looking at our memories for the last 10 years and I'm realizing what a significant decade it was ...

Our First Smartphones

Although the iPhone came out in 2007, it required an AT&T contract and we were dedicated to Verizon, so we had to wait for the first smartphone on Verizon. That happened to be the Android-based phone by Motorola, called "Droid." It came out at the end of 2009 and we both got one.
Here's what we said in our 2010 year-end Newsletter:

Jim just got a new phone for 2020 - The Google Pixel 4XL, not realizing it was exactly 10 years ago that he got his first phone. We dug it out of the drawer so we could take a photo.

Jim's first phone and his most recent

A few of Chris' phones over the years, starting with her Droid 1

As people who are passionate about learning new things, we're sure in the right field with teaching technology! There's something new to learn and teach every day with these.

Riding the Picasa Wave

Picasa, the computer photo management software from Google was the most popular thing we ever taught. Here is our record-breaking live audience for an Introduction to Picasa seminar in August of 2010.

I wrote a book on Picasa, and everywhere we went, we were known for teaching Picasa. In 2009 Google invited us to present a joint webinar on Picasa. It's still available on YouTube.

That all came to an end when Google discontinued the Picasa software in 2016. By then, we had created over 100 tutorial videos on Picasa, a couple hundred articles, and had presented dozens, maybe hundreds of seminars.

Time to move on to Google Photos - Google's Cloud-based photo management system. But, somehow, I don't think it will ever be quite the same as our Picasa teaching days.

Gabbing with the Geeks

In 2010 we started doing little video segments called "Gabbing with the Geeks", the predecessor to our current live YouTube show "What Does This Button Do?"
Here are our first 3 episodes - they're just a few minutes each:

It's a good think Jim lost weight eh? Any pictures of him from 2014 on look MUCH better!

• Gabbing with the Geeks #13  

  August 3, 2011
• Gabbing with the Geeks #12: New Home, 4G  January 4, 2011
• Gabbing with the Geeks #10: Kayak Diving, Upcoming Events
• Gabbing with the Geeks #9: Meet TechnoRV  October 30, 2010
• Gabbing with the Geeks #8  September 9, 2010
• Gabbing with the Geeks #7: Stonehenge August 18, 2010

  Gabbing with the Geeks #6 August 3, 2010 Saratoga Wyoming

• Gabbing with the Geeks: #5 Connecting to the Internet with Droid July 11, 2010  Elkhart, Indiana

Our Website

2010 was when we first unveiled our website based on the WordPress platform. Before that (2007-10) our membership system was based on code I wrote using Coldfusion (yikes) and a straight HTML website built with Dreamweaver. Don't get me wrong, I'm very proud of myself for having built that, but, a coder I am NOT. To see what our website looked like back then, here's a link to the Wayback Machine and a page from GeeksOnTour.com in 2008.

Our Homes

In 2010 we were still living full time in our first ever motorhome, a 30 foot, no slides, class C.

Our first motorhome, we called Oh Boy! and lived in it fulltime from 2003-2011

We traded in on our 2d motorhome, and called it "Big Boy" We lived in that fulltime from 2011-2017

In 2017 we were able to trade Big Boy in for - you guessed it - "Little Boy" We now live in a townhouse in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and use this little RV to take us to RV rallies about 4 months of the year. 

In addition to RV Travel, we started to travel Internationally in 2015.

2015: UK, Belgium, Cuba

2016? 

2017: Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Berlin

2018: Grand Cayman Islands

2019: Australia, New Zealand

2020 plans: Liveaboard dive trip in the Maldives (Indian Ocean) with a stopover in Dubai.

What does this Button Do?

As we slow down a bit with our RV travels, that means we are going to fewer RV rallies. But, we get to do our teaching now thru our Live Streaming YouTube show - What Does This Button Do? Our very first episode was in June of 2014.

We are now on episode 183! You can see them all at GeeksOnTour.com/weeklyshow

I can't wait to see what the next decade brings!

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Comfortable Anywhere

Chris is working on a remote class on Snapseed for tomorrow so she told me I had to make a post.
We're in beautiful Denver, Colorado for a couple more days before heading back to warm South Florida.

Chris and I were walking back to our airb&b from a fine experience at Tavern Lowry, even though the Dolphins lost (again.)

I was marveling at the fact we've done this all over the world.
Walking back to our temporary lodging or RV site from a sports bar or some foodie/drinkfest. What an incredible life we have! Are we citizens of the world, or what? Everything feels somehow familiar wherever we happen to be.

Where else in the world have we made this stroll together? In addition to every state in the lower 48 and parts of Alaska and Canada, the Bahamas, Ireland, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turks and Caicos, Fiji, UK, France, Belgium, Cuba, Bonaire, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Germany, Cayman Islands, Australia, and New Zealand. Whew!

We presented a couple of sessions for the new Senior Planet Center in Denver about technology and Google Photos last Friday. It was fun. I say "we" but we all know Chris does all the work. She's an excellent teacher and had a receptive audience. She received some nice evaluations and autographed a bunch of her books, Mrs. Geek's Guide to Google Photos!
I love the Art Deco everywhere in the suite. I chose this place for the price and location. It is close walking distance to excellent food or 7-Eleven.

 Here are some shots from around Senior Planet.

The Rocket is on top of an Ice Cream Stand. It was art at Burning Man, we were told.

 Senior Planet is adjacent to Wings Over the Rockies Museum.

I plan on visiting.

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Further your technology education**Subscribe to the Free Geeks on Tour Newsletters**

Watch any episode of our Online Show on Learning Smartphones and Tablets!

What Does This Button Do?